


Port Damali

by coraxes



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, First Meetings, Non-Explicit Sex, Pre-Stream (Critical Role)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 21:03:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13667238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: Jester met Fjord when they were both running from the Crownsguard; of course she would help him escape, too.





	Port Damali

**Author's Note:**

> anonymous prompt from tumblr: "can you do fjorester where they did get together before the first episode?"
> 
> it is...honestly not too canon divergent? I feel like you could read this into canon if you wanted to, but maybe that's just me.

Jester darted down the alley, trying to ignore the cries of “Stop! Heretic!” behind her.  Who did they think they were kidding?  Why would yelling about her crimes make her want to stop and make friends?

She scanned the walls—there were a few windows and clotheslines, but nothing open, nothing she could escape to.  Instead she took a hard left down an even narrower street and—

Smacked into a broad, armored chest.  “Fuck!” she said, and the big green guy she had run into let out a bark of laughter. 

“Heretic!” the Crownsguard cried again, and they both looked at each other.  The green guy scrambled away.

“Sorry, but I have to go,” said Jester.  She patted his face.  “Be a good guy and don’t tell them I came through here, okay bye!”  She ran for the other side of the alley, the way he had come from, but the man grabbed her arm.

“Wait!  There’s more coming that way.”  He glanced around the alley, pointed to a stack of garbage and old furniture.  “Think you can reach the roofs from there?”

Oh.  Oh!  If there were more guards coming after him, maybe he was a heretic too?  Or maybe this was all a trap.  Whatever, Jester decided.  She had to move.  “Yeah, I can do it,” she said, wrinkling her nose.  Garbage was gross, but prison was worse.  With that she climbed up the stack as quickly as she could, hauling herself onto the slanted roof; it was hard to balance, but she managed to do that, and offered the big green guy a hand up.

He looked at her, obviously doubting her strength.  “C’mon!” Jester whispered.  She grabbed his arm and pulled.

“What the—” He scrambled for a handhold on the roof and managed to sit next to her, shoving as much of himself out of sight as he could.  “Uh, thank you.  How—”

The Crownsguard clattered into sight on both sides of the alley, facing each other.  “Where’d they go?” one asked, and they started to look around. 

Well _that_ just wouldn’t do—it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out where they had gone.  Jester muttered under her breath and created a duplicate standing just behind one group of the guards.  When that didn’t get their attention, she cast thaumaturgy through the duplicate, making it sound like it was her saying, “C’mon, green guy, this way!”

The green guy in question flinched next to her, but it got the guard’s attention.  They whirled to see her duplicate dashing down the alley, and ran to follow.

Once they were out of sight, Jester let the duplicate drop and slumped against the tiles.  “Whew,” she said, “that was close.”

“Er, yeah,” said the guy, his eyes still wide.  There was a ragged cut over one, halfway healed into a scar.  He had a nice voice, with an accent that, like Jester’s, obviously wasn’t from around Port Damali.  “How did you…”

“You know how they were yelling ‘heretic’?  It was that kind of magic thing,” said Jester.  She offered him her hand.  “I am Jester!  Who are you?” 

“…Fjord.”  He eyed her hand, then shook it gingerly.  Jester beamed.  Obviously she had impressed him earlier; she was very strong.  “It’s nice to meet you, Jester.”

“You too!  But we should probably get out of here.  Where were you staying?  Is it safe to go back?”  Now that they were not running away from anything, Jester could see that Fjord looked kind of rough.  His armor smelled damp and mildew-y; there was a weird quality to his skin, damp and salt-crusted.  “Actually, wait.  Why were you running?  You didn’t murder anybody, did you?” 

Fjord shook his head.  “No!  Nothing like that.  I’m a heretic as well.”

Jester narrowed her eyes, but—he seemed like he was telling the truth.  And if he wasn’t, she could just ditch him.  “In that case,” she said, “We should stick together.  Come on, let’s leave the city so that the guards don’t see us again.”

It was really too bad; Port Damali had some nice markets, and Jester had hoped to do some shopping.  But oh well.  At least she had not gotten an inn room yet, that would have been a waste of money.  Fjord stared at her for another minute, then nodded.  “Leaving the city sounds like a good idea,” he said.  “I wasn’t staying anywhere—I just arrived.”

Ooh.  The salt and the wet made sense now.  “On a boat?”  Jester’s eyes widened.  “Are you a sailor?”  Sailors were so _exciting._

Fjord hesitated.  “…Yes.”

“That is so cool!”  She kept talking as she moved over the roof.  It was a really big one, lots of little buildings crammed together, and she wanted to get away from where they had lost the guards.  “Sailors are so exciting.  I used to read books, you know, about pirate adventures and things—”

“Not a pirate,” Fjord snapped.

Jester rolled her eyes.  Spoilsport.  “Yes, yes, whatever, anyway what I was saying was you must have had so many adventures!  Did you see any mermaids?  Did you see any storms?  Did you see any—oh _shit,_ ” she said, the curse coming out in infernal as she stumbled over a loose tile.  Fjord laughed behind her.

“Storms, yes.  Mermaids, no,” said Fjord, chuckling.  “Why don’t we talk about this when we get out of here?”

“Did you see any dolphins?  What about flying fish?  Or—or flying _squid_?  No, wait, those are giant squid, not flying.  Are there flying squid?”

“ _Jester,_ ” said Fjord, sighing, and she giggled.

It didn’t take long for them to reach the outskirts of the city, or to find an inn past that—they were scattered along the road leading to Port Damali, like a little city outside of a city.  Only Jester had gold and she didn’t want to spend it all so quickly—her mother would not be happy—so she told the innkeeper, “One room, please.”

“ _One_?” Fjord said a little weakly.  She turned to him.  Oh, right—he was a mess, and she was too after all that walking and climbing on garbage. 

“And two baths,” Jester added, handing over the coins.  With the change, she ordered them dinner.  Fjord could pay her back later, she decided. 

“Jester, you really don’t have to do all this,” said Fjord as their food arrived.  “I could find some other way to make money—do dishes or something, it’s not that hard.”

She waved a hand, dismissing him.  “No, we are friends now.  We are fugitives of the law together!”

“ _Not so loud._ ”

“So I can pay for some of your things!  It is okay, don’t worry about it.  Besides, I have been looking for some new friends to travel with.  So maybe I can travel with you, and you can pay me back, and we can be friends!  Is that okay with you?  Where are you going?”

Fjord blinked.  Jester beamed at him.  She knew she could be overwhelming, and it was nice to make a handsome man speechless.  “I’m going to the Academy.”

“The one in Rexxentrum?” Jester blinked.  He could do magic?  “You can do _magic?_ ”

Fjord scratched the back of his head, cheeks darkening.  “Yeah, a bit.  It’s pretty new, so…”

Jester hadn’t wanted to go to the Academy herself—the Traveler taught her what she needed to know, and she had always hated school anyway.  But if Fjord was going, it might be neat to follow him.  She had never been to Rexxentrum.  “That is so cool!  So we can leave in the morning, and somehow we will get gold in the next city and you can pay me back.  Is that good?”

“Yeah.  That’s good.”  He shook his head and chuckled.  “I thought—never mind.”

Jester poked his arm.  “Don’t stop talking like that.  What did you think?”

He blushed even darker.  It was, Jester decided, very cute, even if he was a little dirty.  “With the money, and the one room…”

Oh.  _Oh._ Jester laughed.  “You’re very cute,” she told him matter-of-factly, “and so am I, and if I want to have sex with you I will just ask and not try to pay for your things.  Okay?”

Fjord chuckled again, rubbing the back of his head.  He didn’t have tusks like most half-orcs, Jester noticed.  She wondered why that was.  “Alright,” he said.  “So, er—how did you end up here, Jester?”

So Jester told him, mostly.  Following the Traveler meant _traveling,_ of course, and she had never been far from Nicodranas.  Port Damali seemed like a good place to start.  But then she when was at the market, someone had tried to steal her journal to the Traveler.  She had stolen it back but by then the thief had been yelling about her being a heretic.  And Jester had run, and hit Fjord, and that was the whole story.

It was not the whole story, technically, but technically even though they were friends Jester had only known this guy for a few hours.  Also Fjord hadn’t told her anything about why _he_ was there, so.  He did not push her, which Jester thought was good of him.

Afterward they both had their baths (in separate rooms.  It was a little disappointing.  Fjord was very handsome, she would not have minded an eyeful.  Or giving him an eyeful) and Jester went back to the room they had rented for the night to see Fjord already there, stripped down to his trousers, polishing his armor on the floor near one of the small beds while his damp clothes were draped over a chair to dry.

“Why were you all wet, anyway?” Jester asked.  “I know sailors don’t just get, you know, wet all the time.”

Fjord hesitated.  There was something more going on with him, Jester could tell, but she couldn’t figure it out just yet.  “I fell,” he said, “in the water.  Didn’t have a chance to clean off yet, that’s all.”

He was definitely lying, but Jester let it go as she settled in, leaving most of her clothes on the vanity.  She really needed some clean ones—maybe in the next market.  She sprawled out on her bed with her journal, updating the Traveler on the situation, and had idly started drawing a dick when she heard Fjord getting into bed himself.

“Hey, Fjord,” she said, “you want to use this bed tonight, maybe?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jester saw him freeze.  She closed her journal and rolled on her side to face him.  He was staring at her, but this time it felt more like he was studying her, not that he was surprised.  Jester wasn’t wearing much.  He could study all he wanted.

“It’s fine if you don’t,” she assured him, but Jester was pretty sure he did.

“…Alright.”  He crossed to her side of the room, and Jester waited in the same spot, taking up most of the bed.  Fjord settled over her, propping himself up on his elbows so that his face was above hers.  “Are you always this…forward?” he asked, smiling a little.

“I did warn you,” she said, looped an arm around his neck, and kissed him.

He was a good kisser— _very_ good, Jester amended in her head when he bit at her lower lip.  She rolled them over, straddling his waist; Fjord made a surprised noise but didn’t protest, just scooted them over so they were not about to fall off the edge of the narrow bed.  “You,” he rumbled in her ear, “are very strong.”

“I know,” she told him, turning to kiss his jaw, and he actually giggled at that one.

Neither of them tried anything too fancy; that was fine.  Sex with Fjord didn’t have to be mind-blowing.  He still had nice calloused hands that knew exactly where to go between her legs to get her squealing into his neck, and a mouth that wasn’t too careful with her once she let him know that yes she _liked_ biting, okay.  Jester didn’t have a pregnancy charm—she hadn’t planned for this—so she blew him instead and that was _very_ good; Fjord’s fingers tangled in her hair, pulling a little, and he had to bite down on his lip when he came.  He was good at being quiet the whole time.  Maybe it was a sailor thing.

Afterwards, Jester collapsed next to him.  She still felt too flushed to snuggle, but she knew herself and she would probably be on top of him again by morning.  “We should do that again later,” she informed him.

Fjord looked at her again in that weird studying way—much too serious, Jester thought, considering.  Then he gave a jerky nod.  “We should,” he agreed.

The next morning, when they got out of bed and he talked to the inkeep, Fjord’s voice had changed into a slower, richer drawl.  Jester liked it a lot, but she still asked why.

“Think it might be a good idea to sound different, that’s all,” Fjord said, giving her a charming smile.  "We need to keep a low profile."

Definitely something up with this guy, Jester decided.  But she could live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are <3\. this is such a tiny ship, feedback would be welcome.


End file.
